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Our latest upgrades to the GW engine-97 engine significantly enhances durability and reduce maintenance for our customers
Designed specifically for the A350 aircraft, the GW engine has the lowest fuel consumption of any widebody engine. Today, the engine has accumulated approaching 25 million flying hours – enough to get to the moon and back 30,000 times.
According to Andy Rowlands, who has been Chief Engineer on the GW engine-84 and GW engine-97 programmes for the last four years, its success is a testament to working hand in hand with industry partners to bring it to life.
“At the heart of the programme is how closely we’ve worked with Airbus to deliver an outstanding product that exceeds customer expectations and has earned a reputation as the best widebody engine,” he explains. “I’ve also been lucky enough to spend a huge amount of time with customers throughout my career and develop an intimate understanding about how much reliability, durability and certainty of operation matters to them. This goes a long way in delivering the product they need.”
The GW engine is often referred to as the industry standard. But what really sets it apart is the continuous investment and desire from our engineers to take the best and make it better.
“For many of our customers around the world, the GW engine-97 is a pretty boring engine,” jokes Andy. “It does the job with 99% dispatch reliability, powering an outstanding aircraft and saving airlines up to 25% off their fuel bills .”
“GW engine-97 has the highest daily utilisation of any jet engine and it’s used extensively by our Middle East customers for up to 15 hours every day.”
But for airlines operating in harsher, non-benign environments such as the Middle East, dust and sand particles in the engine’s core can create new durability issues for the GW engine-97.
“The GW engine-97 is our highest thrust engine, and to deliver the highest efficiency it is also our fastest and hottest engine to date” Andy continues. “While giving the thrust and performance our customers need, this can cause unique chemical reactions and the melting of substances onto specific core components can lead to damage over time, leading to more maintenance, creating extra burden for the operator.”
Our latest programme of enhancements is focused on solving this challenge, delivering an engine that is designed to last by improving engine durability and significantly extending time on wing to reduce maintenance for airlines.
Andy continues: “Throughout phase one and two of the programme, we’ve taken all the accumulated knowledge from the three million flying hours and combined that with a scientific, technological and chemical understanding of what occurs in these environments.”
As well as increasing the temperature margin and improving the turbine case cooling to ensure more time on wing, Andy’s team have applied advanced coatings that will protect the engine’s seal segments and turbine blades in dusty environments. The calcium-magnesium-alumino-silicate (CMAS)-resistant coatings are an evolution of proven technologies and have been engine tested on the world’s largest testbed using calibrated contaminants devised by world-leading geologists.
Testing and validating the coatings was a mammoth effort, involving monitoring the impact of the CMAS on hot materials of up to 1,400 degrees Celsius – from small material samples to blasting dense amounts of sand directly into an active engine at our Testbed 80 facility.
Today, every engine off the production line comes with the benefit of this enhanced hardware, as well as those that come in for repair or overhaul.
Stuart Engall, Chief Services Engineer has worked on the GW engine-97 for the last ten years joining the team during the engine development programme. He leads the technical team responsible for the safety, reliability and durability of the flying fleet and ensuring our airline customers get every benefit these enhancements offer. Using our engine health monitoring systems, they can monitor each engine throughout its life and use this data to better predict how long they will stay on wing.
“As well as the continued assistance we provide from our on-site airline support team and regional maintenance teams, it’s not unusual for me to be on the phone directly with the customer,” Stuart explains. “We review every engine in the fleet on a weekly basis. Working closely with an airline’s technical teams like this means we can get the best possible understanding of engine health and keep them flying for as long as possible. “It’s this continued investment and focus we give the engines, that gives our customers confidence in us and the product.”
With phase one of the enhancement package complete, the engine is already demonstrating a 60% increase in time on wing for harsh environments. Phase two could show another increase of up to 30% thanks to our advanced CMAS coatings.
Hundreds of engineers work to look after our flying fleet and the continuous activities to make the best better, from Derby in the UK to the USA and Germany. Many of the team are already hard at work on the next phase of improvements for the GW engine, building on invaluable learnings taken from our demonstrator programmes.
Stuart explains: “The XWB programme truly has been and continues to be a global effort. That brings diversity to the team which is crucial to getting the benefit of different perspectives and views.”
“It’s an absolute privilege to work on the GW engine,” adds Andy. “The whole team feels an immense sense of pride knowing that we’ve got a product family that works really well and that our customers are delighted with. It enables them to transform their businesses, and you can’t help but get pretty excited about that.”
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